


a sign of life and a wound

by halleycomets



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 21:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6723427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halleycomets/pseuds/halleycomets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time he had seen Maria, Reynolds or Clement or whoever the hell she was now, had been on television, humiliated, a caricature.  They had both been lampooned, but he had sold her out, exposed her, painted her red with untruths and been too ashamed to ask if she had been able to shed them after twenty years. He may never see her again to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sign of life and a wound

**Author's Note:**

> here's that maria reynolds stuff no one asked for
> 
> but also some father-age 52 year old alexander hamilton stuff no one asked for. not necessarily a part of sorry about the blood verse, but potentially! truly it was meant to stand alone.
> 
> i was inspired by some historial maria content i saw floating around - it turns out her real life ending was a happy one. she changed her name to maria clement, got a job, and married a doctor. apparently she died "a respectable and religious lady of Philadelphia," which is the best outcome i could have imagined (no thanks to alexander hamilton and many thanks to aaron burr). i took some liberties and put her back in new york. maybe she moves to philly later.
> 
> thank you for reading, i love kudos and comments, power to maria reynolds, alex get roasted.

He recognized her perfume first.

Bizarre that she would be wearing the same fragrance, a rosy scent, thick enough to cut through cigarette smoke and roasted nuts on 7 th Avenue, with a name he didn't recognize – he saw the bottle once, when she had come right from work at whatever department store. She had it in her purse. It was topped with a plastic flower that looked a little grubby, like a children's toy well-played-with.

He gripped the strap of his briefcase on his shoulder and turned around, looking, not seeing her but smelling her –

“ _ Oof!” _

“Ah!”

“I'm so sorry-” The woman bent in hasty apology, her face down, ready to be on her way but close to tripping.

“No, my fault-” He laid hands on her arms to steady her.

She looked up and gasped. “Oh.”

“Maria...”

He stood still, a cardinal sin in the middle of a New York sidewalk. Two people bumped his shoulder before he joined their flow and crossed the street. His hand still hovered behind her elbow as she walked in the same direction.

“I’m not following you I swear,” she huffed, balancing her bags as they neared the end of the crosswalk.  “I only have a half hour break and I’m starving, and Subway is  _ right _ there...”

He kept trying to get a look at her through his periphery, but as always, Maria Reynolds had a way of blending into the crowd when she wanted to.  He could only hear her flustered explanation that gave him none of the information he was really interested in.  

“You’re fine.” He paused at the traffic signal pole, just to see if she’d follow suit. 

She did. Her eyes appraised him, her chin raised carefully as if it held something in balance. He saw marks of age on her, but not many – her mouth carried a few worried wrinkles as she spoke, from keeping her lips terse. Her eyes were tired, but they always had been. “You look alright, Alexander.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm gonna go.”

“Okay...”

In the space of a moment, he saw her shoulder turn away from him, and he felt his chest tighten against the anxiety of an opportunity – one he was about to miss. The last time he had seen Maria, Reynolds or Clement or whoever the hell she was now, had been on television, humiliated, a caricature. He had seen cartoons of her in the papers. She had been alluded to on late night satirical television. They had both been lampooned, but he had sold her out, exposed her, painted her red with untruths and been too ashamed to ask if she had been able to shed them after twenty years.

He may never see her again to do so.

“Maria.” He touched her shoulder with just his fingertips.  She swung back around with her whole body and raised a sharp brow. Her resting face had always been suspicious, but she eyed him then with her full capacity for distrust.

“Can I buy you a coffee?”

She stood and looked at him, her breathing visibly heavy. She blinked, suddenly becoming steady. 

“Sure. That would be nice.”

“Better than Subway.”

“You did have taste in food.”

He laughed. So did she.

  
  


“This is pretty damn good,” said Maria, cupping her mug in her hands. This was an independent coffee shop, with  _ dishes _ . A cappuccino was six dollars. Alexander would have complained about it to anyone else, but not her. She always withdrew from complaints about money.

 

He was surprised at how much he remembered about this woman he hadn't looked in the eye in two decades. Their relationship  _ had  _ been financially beneficial to her, that much was true, and so long as he put forth the appropriate new money braggadocio – no meal was too expensive, no gift too extravagant – she had reveled in his treats. She was twenty-three, and her husband got  _ his  _ rocks off treating  _ himself _ . But the minute he insinuated that it was an inconvenience, she would balk.  
  


“You should take it back,” she had said of a sapphire ring he had slipped on her pinky finger one evening back in 1990-something after a passing comment about its expense, meant to be a joke.  He was laughing as he said it.  The crack in her voice was a record scratch in the tone of the evening.

“What do you mean,” he had said, his laugh sputtering out.

“If it’s that much, don’t spend it on me,” she said, tugging at the band.

“Maria…”

“I don’t want it!”  Her face had been flush beneath copious rouge.  

After much dispute, he finally understood it to be embarrassment. He had quietly taken the ring back. 

He grimaced, remembering that he’d then had the audacity to give it to Eliza.

 

“What’s wrong,” Maria asked him, taking a loud slurp.

“Nothin’. I didn’t respond right to you on the street -- you look good too.”

“Thanks,” she said, rubbing a long-nailed thumb on the rim of the mug.  “I am good.”

“Oh yeah?”

“My name’s Mathew now.”  She smiled.  Alexander did too. She had a beautiful smile. It was something she knew about herself. “Married myself a doctor.”

“You’re kidding,” he laughed.

“Why do you say that?” She didn’t.

“I-” He blinked. He looked into his own mug. “How’d you meet?”

“I had a temp job in his practice. Mr. Burr set it up for me, and I did good work, so Dr. Mathew hired me as a permanent office manager. Now I get to call him Thomas.”

“That’s excellent.”

“Thank you.”

“Is he a good man?”

She set her jaw and looked at him square in the eye. “He’s a very good man. Thank you for asking, Alexander.”

He looked down again, taking her ire on the jaw. He was supposed to have been her good man once, a foil to a cheating, violent, gambling drunk. He wondered now, as he had wondered then, if James Reynolds asked her if Alexander Hamilton was a good man -- was he maintaining an affair ridden with blackmail for the sex, for the threats? For love?

He stole another look at her face. She looked at his unabashedly. 

“I know what you’re thinking about,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he sighed. “You always did.”

“I’ve been going to church.” She took another quick sip and wiped froth from her lip in a quick swipe. She looked out the glass pane of the storefront into the street. “It’s changed everything for me. I have friends there, you know. You ever go to church?”

Alexander had to admit, he wasn’t a fan. He knew how to accommodate religion, for Eliza, for a Southern Christian president and his Southern Christian cabinet, but it rarely factored into his own decisions.  Rarely, but not never. “A couple times. Mostly after shit happens.”

“You’re one of those.”

He laughed. “I’m one of those.”

“I was sorry to hear about your son.”

“You got me Maria, I went to church after that.”

“Listen…” She leaned in.  The steam, barely in wisps now, rose around her face. “When I go there every Sunday, they talk a lot about forgiveness-”

“They tell you to forgive me?”

“Can you shut up for two seconds?”

He pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair.

“They talk a lot about forgiveness,” she continued. “Talk about grace. How forgiveness isn’t really about deserving it.”

Alexander thought again of the ring, and her embarrassment.  _ Don’t spend it on me,  _ she said.

“Our pastor likes to say that God didn’t make us to hate us. He wants us to succeed, y’know? I know you were never into this stuff but since you reached out to me, you will hear this.  I’m taking a lot of comfort in the idea that all I need do to be forgiven and loved is ask. That’s how it is with God.”

He cocked his head. “ _ You  _ ask for forgiveness?”

“When I thought I was the one who had done wrong, yes. And I thought that for a long, long time.”

“I’m sorry, Maria.”

“Oh, stop. It predated you. Do you think I woulda been with James Reynolds if I had self-worth? Let alone gone through all that shit that lead me to your door?” She looked at a delicate watch on her wrist, a thin gold chain. “I asked Him forgiveness for being a whore and a fraud and all that. For being so weak all the time. But then I started to ask for other things. Strength, resolution. Love.”

“And He gave you that doctor.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“He gave me what I asked for. Strength, resolution, and love. And forgiveness. And what you get from God, you get to give.”

“Sounds like a lot of double talk.”

“I forgive you, Alexander.”

He stiffened.  

“You don’t owe me that,” he said.

“You’re right. I don’t.” She finished off her cappuccino, leaving him with a minute of silence. He rubbed his hands; his jaw was tight, his mind buzzing. She moved with a resolute stillness. “I owe myself.”

She released her mug and stood, shouldering her bags again. “I gotta go.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“Thank you.”

“You look tired, Alex. Maybe give yourself a break.” She gave him that smile one more time, a clear concession, a gift. He hoped it didn’t cost her too much.

“Take care, Maria.”

 

He sat for another ten minutes with her empty mug, replaying the conversation.  _ What you get from God, you get to give. I forgive you, Alexander. I owe myself.  _ It was strange to him that someone could walk into church and come out without their entitlement to anger. Maybe that wasn’t it. He had brought her here to apologize, and he’d done it, and she hadn’t batted an eye.

It was one-sided closure. He picked up her mug and examined the stain of her lipstick on the rim, red as the day he met her. God may not care about who deserves what, but Alexander Hamilton did. Justice chooses a side. He was glad to lose this round. He was glad the closure went to her.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is APPRECIATED and ADORED


End file.
